Post war key terms

  • HUAC

    HUAC
    The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties.
  • Roy Benavidez

    Roy Benavidez
    Master Sergeant Raul Perez "Roy" Benavidez was a member of the United States Army Special Forces and retired United States Army master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions
  • War Powers Act

    War Powers Act
    The War Powers Act of 1941, also known as the First War Powers Act, was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
  • Venona papers

    Venona papers
    The following List of Americans in the Venona papers is a list of names ostensibly deciphered from codenames contained in the Venona project, an American government effort from 1943-1980 to decrypt coded messages by intelligence forces of the Soviet Union.
  • Iron Curtain

    Iron Curtain
    The Iron Curtain was the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolized efforts by the Soviet Union to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the west and non-Soviet-controlled areas.
  • Truman doctrine

    Truman doctrine
    The Truman Doctrine was an American foreign policy created to counter Soviet geopolitical hegemony during the Cold War. It was first announced to Congress by President Harry S. Truman on March 12, 1947 and further developed on July 12, 1948 when he pledged to contain Soviet threats to Greece and Turkey.
  • Cold War

    Cold War
    The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc and powers in the Eastern Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but 1947–91 is common.
  • Containment policy

    Containment policy
    Containment was a United States policy using numerous strategies to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge its communist sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and Vietnam.
  • Marshall Plan

    Marshall Plan
    The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Western Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $130 billion in current dollar value as of March 2016) in economic support to help rebuild Western European economies after the end of World War
  • berlin airlift

    berlin airlift
    The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. At the end of the Second World War, U.S., British, and Soviet military forces divided and occupied Germany. Also divided into occupation zones, Berlin was located far inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany.
  • NATO

    NATO
    The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949.
  • 1950's prosperity

    1950's prosperity
    Was a good time because Men wer coming back from the military and war and were able to be with their families. A lot happened in pop culture
  • McCarthyism

    McCarthyism
    McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism."
  • Domino Theory

    Domino Theory
    The domino theory was a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.
  • Rock n'roll

    Rock n'roll
    a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based on a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums.
  • Beatnik

    Beatnik
    a young person in the 1950s and early 1960s belonging to a subculture associated with the beat generation.
  • Korean War

    Korean War
    The Korean War was a war between North and South Korea, in which a United Nations force led by the United States fought for the South, and China fought for the North, which was also assisted by the Soviet Union.
  • rosenberg trial

    rosenberg  trial
    hte trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins in New York Southern District federal court. Judge Irving R. Kaufman presides over the espionage prosecution of the couple accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians (treason could not be charged because the United States was not at war with the Soviet Union).
  • Jonas Salk

    Jonas Salk
    Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist. He discovered and developed the first successful polio vaccine.
  • dwight d eisenhower

    dwight d eisenhower
    Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe
  • Ray Kroc

    Ray Kroc
    Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc was an American businessman and philanthropist. He joined McDonald's in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world.
  • Vietnamization

    Vietnamization
    Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops."
  • Vietnam war

    Vietnam war
    The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and known in Vietnam as Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam
  • Interstae Highway Act

    Interstae Highway Act
    The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law.
  • Space race

    Space race
    The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), for supremacy in spaceflight capability.
  • Abbie Hoffman

    Abbie Hoffman
    Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman was an American political and social activist and anarchist who co-founded the Youth International Party.
  • Medicare

    Medicare
    Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older, certain younger people with disabilities, and people with End-Stage Renal Disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a transplant, sometimes called ESRD).
  • John F. Kennedy

    John F. Kennedy
    John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy, commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963
  • Lyndon B. Johnson

    Lyndon B. Johnson
    Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States under President John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963
  • Bay of Pigs

    Bay of Pigs
    The Bay of Pigs Invasion, known in Latin America as Invasión de Playa Girón, was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on 17 April 1961
  • Cuban Missile Crisis

    Cuban Missile Crisis
    The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis, the Caribbean Crisis, or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning Soviet ballistic missiles deployment in Cuba
  • Betty Friedan

    Betty Friedan
    an American writer, activist, and feminist. A leading figure in the women's movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the second wave of American feminism in the 20th century.
  • Baby boom Generation

    Baby boom Generation
    Baby boomers are people born during the demographic post–World War II baby boom approximately between the years 1946 and 1964.
  • Great Society

    Great Society
    The Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States launched by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65. The main goal was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.
  • Gulf of tonkin Resolution

    Gulf of tonkin Resolution
    On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
  • Medicaid

    Medicaid
    Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that helps low-income individuals or families pay for the costs associated with long-term medical and custodial care, provided they qualify. Although largely funded by the federal government, Medicaid is run by the state where coverage may vary.
  • Miranda v. arizona

    Miranda v. arizona
    a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a 5-4 majority, the Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, bu
  • Tet offensive 1968

    Tet offensive 1968
    was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States, and their allies.
  • Richard Nixon

    Richard Nixon
    Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974 when he became the only U.S. president to resign the office.
  • Rust Belt/Sun Belt

    Rust Belt/Sun Belt
    parts of the northeastern and midwestern US that are characterized by declining industry, aging factories, and a falling population. Steel-producing cities in Pennsylvania and Ohio are at its center.
  • G I Bill

    G I Bill
    The United States military moved to an all-volunteer force in 1973, and veterans continued to receive benefits, in part as an inducement to enlist, under the Veterans Educational Assistance Program (VEAP) and the Montgomery G.I. Bill (MGIB). From December 1976 through 1987, veterans received assistance under the VEAP.
  • Gary powers

    Gary powers
    Francis Gary Powers – often referred to as simply Gary Powers – was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident